Boost Mobile adds iPhone

Boost Mobile, an Irvine company that offers cell phones with no contract, will start selling the iPhone next month for the first time. The move combines one of the world’s most popular handsets with a model that rewards customers for paying on time by shrinking their payments.

Boost’s plans currently start at $55 per month but go as low as $40 after 18 months of on-time payments. The plan includes unlimited minutes, text messages and data, although after 2.5 gigabytes of usage in a month the speeds are reduced.

Sprint and its other pre-paid brand Virgin already offer iPhones, as do contract carriers Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and a raft of other pre-paid carriers.

Boost hasn’t said what its iPhone price will be. On Virgin, the thumbprint-sensing iPhone 5S starts at $550 and the colorful iPhone 5C is $450. Sprint and other contract carriers sell the phones at around $200 and $100, respectively, in exchange for a two-year contract and generally higher monthly payments.

In 2011, Boost started offering Android handsets, which have since taken over the handset lineup. Its highest-end Android is currently the Galaxy SIII, the previous generation flagship Samsung phone, which sells for $400. Even as Sprint and Virgin started offering the iPhone, Boost championed low-cost Android smartphones to differentiate itself from the others.

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